Dollar
The
dollar (represented by the
dollar sign: "$") is the name of the official
currency in several countries, dependencies and other regions. The
United States dollar is the world's most widely circulated currency.
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Close up of a modern US dollar bill. |
The name
Thaler (from
thal, or nowadays usually
tal, "valley") came from the German coin
Guldengroschen ("great guilder", being of
silver but equal in value to a
gold guilder), minted from the silver from a rich mine at
Joachimsthal -
Jáchymov (St. Joachim's Valley) in
Bohemia (then part of the
Holy Roman Empire, now part of the
Czech Republic).
The name is related to the
tolar in
Slovenia (and historically in
Bohemia), the
daalder in the
Netherlands and
daler in
Sweden,
Denmark, and
Norway. Of these, only the Slovenian Tolar is still in use; on 1 January 2007, however, it will be replaced by the
euro.
The name "
Spanish dollar" was used for a Spanish coin, the
peso, worth eight reals (hence the
nickname "pieces of eight"), which was widely circulated during the
18th century in the
Spanish colonies in the New World. The use of the Spanish dollar and the
Maria Theresa thaler as legal tender for the early
United States are the reasons for the name of the nation's currency. However, the word
dollar was in use in the
English language as slang or mis-pronunciation for the thaler for about 200 years before the
American Revolution, with many quotes in the plays of Shakespeare referring to dollars as money. Spanish dollars were in circulation in the
Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and were
legal tender in
Virginia.
Coins known as dollars were also in use in
Scotland during the
17th century, and there is a claim that the use of the English word, and perhaps even the use of the coin, began at the
University of St Andrews. This explains the sum of 'Ten thousand dollars' mentioned in
Macbeth (Act I, Scene II), although the real
Macbeth upon whom the play was based lived in the
11th century, making the reference
anachronistic.
In the early 19th century, a British five-shilling piece, or
crown, was sometimes called a dollar, probably because its appearance was similar to the Spanish dollar. This expression appeared again in the 1940s, when U.S. troops came to the UK during
World War II. At the time a U.S. dollar was worth about 5s., so some of the U.S. soldiers started calling it a dollar. Consequently, they called the
half crown "half a dollar", and the expression caught on among some locals and could be heard into the 1960s.
In the early days of the United States, the dollar was a defined unit of trade equal to 412.5 grains of 90% silver. Today there is no definition of any weight or measure associated with its exchange. The silver content of U.S. coinage was mostly removed in 1965 and the dollar essentially became a baseless free-floating
fiat currency.
* The word
buckâ€"possibly an abbreviation from
buckskin, an intrinsic "currency" for trade with
American Indians known since
1746â€"has been recorded since
1856 and is widely used as a synonym for the dollars of many countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The latter term,
skin, is also used as a synonym as is the possibly related term
squaw money.*
Greenback, a nickname originally applied to a 19th-century United States
Demand Note, is now a common specific reference to the
U.S. dollar; it is not used for coins or dollars of other countries.
* Other slang terms in usage include "cabbage", "cash", "scratch", "dough" and "bills".
* "Moolah" or "Mulah" is a slang term for large amounts of dollars.
* "Bread" is a slang term for money. For example, one might say, "How much bread do you bring home from work?"
*The
tala is based on the
Samoan pronunciation of the word "dollar". Likewise, the name of the smaller unit,
seneiti, equates to "cent".
*The
Slovenian tolar has the same origin as dollar, i.e.
thaler.
Some of these are called dollars in English, but by a different name in the native language of the country:
*
Australian dollar*
Barbados dollar*
Bahamian dollar*
Belize dollar*
Bermuda dollar*
Brunei dollar*
Canadian dollar*
Cayman Islands dollar*
East Caribbean dollar*
Fijian dollar*
Guyanese dollar*
Hong Kong dollar*
Jamaican dollar*
Liberian dollar*
Namibian dollar*
New Zealand dollar*
Singapore dollar*
Solomon Islands dollar*
Suriname dollar*
New Taiwan dollar*
Trinidad and Tobago dollar*
United States dollar*
Zimbabwean dollar (see also
Rhodesian dollar)
The name has also been applied to the
international dollar, a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power that the U.S. dollar has in the United States at a given point in time.
*
Dollar sign*
U.S. one dollar bill*
List of circulating currencies*
Etymonline (word history) and
Etymonline (word history)*
Thesaurus (synonyms)*
The Source: Slang Dictionary*
Relative values of the US dollar, from 1790 to 2005
